The former Olympian nicknamed “Drama Jana” has finally found fulfilment. Jana Pittman has embraced farm life and the organised chaos that comes with raising six kids as a single parent.
“I’ve always been a chaser of dreams and hard things, and that naturally makes me more emotional. People have said I look for the drama, but I think it’s more
I sought out difficult opportunities,” she says.
“Who goes and studies medicine as a single parent when you’re 30? Who goes and jumps on a bobsled [to compete at the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi] when their athletic career is finished?”
Jana copped her unflattering nickname and an avalanche of criticism when she dramatically threw away her crutches ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympics after injuring her knee.
FINDING BALANCE
These days, she doesn’t need any extra drama in her life, because she spends her days dealing with the real-life drama that comes with delivering babies and saving pregnant mums’ lives.
“I am very much chasing the opposite because as a training obstetrician I get it every single day when a baby’s life is on the line or a mum who is bleeding.
“Life has to be calmer so I can cope with my real job, which is very intense and very real. I don’t chase fast races or any kind of extra. I’m just trying to find that peace and for me that’s animals and farm life.
“I needed to find balance and see more of my kids. It’s been the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Jana, 43, packed up her life, including her six kids and their menagerie of animal friends, about 12 months ago to move from Sydney to Port Macquarie, NSW, and live on a small hobby farm not far from the hospital where she works.
And now Dr Pittman gets to live out her very own childhood Dr Doolittle dream, having created a “magical place” filled with dogs, cats, chickens, peacocks, turkeys, sheep, horses, donkeys, cows, frogs, lizards and snakes.
SELF-VALUE
The smiles on the faces of her animal-loving kids – Cornelis, 19, Emily, 11, Jemima, nine, Charlie, five, and four-year-old twins Willow and Quinlan, has made her reconsider what’s important in life.
“I’ve had a really successful high adrenaline, high expectation life, and I don’t necessarily want that for the kids. I just want them to be happy, have a great friendship network and have a lot of self-value,” Jana says.
She and the kids have just spent the weekend welcoming “the most gorgeous extravagant additions” to the farm in the form of some Valais sheep, including a “gentlemanly” ram called Rambo.
“They’re really, really, friendly and dance all over the place. The kids chose to get the sheep rather than going on another ski holiday,” she says. “It really told me what I needed to hear!”
The sheep join three “cuddly” Great Danes, two ragdoll cats – called Bruce and Poppy – a 14-year-old yellow carpet python named Nala, measuring 1.4m, and two smaller blonde spotted pythons.
Jana also has two bearded dragons, including one named Speedy that she bought on impulse when she mistakenly thought she was having a miscarriage.
“I ended up having a lizard and a baby!” she laughs.
If that wasn’t enough of a menagerie, there are also 42 chickens, 12 peacocks, nine turkeys, five frogs, four Highland cows, three horses and two donkeys.
“We eat all the eggs we collect,” she says, adding that her kids have all turned vegetarian since moving.
Jana’s decision to uproot her family has seen her kids blossom, with her eldest, Cornelis, who competed with Jana on the Amazing Race Australia three years ago,
about to join the army.
NEW HORIZONS
The two-time world champion hurdler made her Olympic debut at the 2000 Sydney Games and won gold at two Commonwealth Games, before famously becoming the first Australian female to compete at both a winter and summer Olympic Games.
And even when Jana gave it all away to study medicine, she still chose the most challenging path, deciding to commit to three extra years study to become an obstetrician specialising in high-risk pregnancies.
“It’s like the Olympics of obstetrics and gynaecology, but I realise that’s not what life is about any more,” she says, explaining that a job delivering babies in a regional hospital is every bit as rewarding as a stellar sporting career.
“I’ve had so many women’s health issues myself [four miscarriages, a cervical cancer scare and breast implant surgery and removal], so I bring a lot of lived experience – and I love delivering babies! I feel like it’s my calling.”
Most mere mortals would find it challenging raising six kids, but on top of a medical career Jana is also in demand as a motivational speaker and brand ambassador.
She has recently announced a brand partnership with health supplement brand Calmerceuticals, and also Rest Australia, the cooling bedding loved by Hollywood star Drew Barrymore.
Jana is a “big believer in menopause therapy” and says both companies are doing revolutionary work to help women experiencing perimenopause, and even credits Rest’s cooling sheets with helping her get a better night’s sleep.
With her 44th birthday just weeks away, Jana insists that “six is enough”, after having one child with first husband English hurdler Chris Rawlinson, two with an anonymous sperm donor and three, including twins, with second husband Paul Gatward.
“Paul is my best friend and he comes here every weekend. We just don’t have that relationship any more. We split up when the twins were six weeks old. We are still married, but we separated in a relationship sense three years ago,” she says.
HAPPY & SETTLED
With plans to install a yurt and turn their home into a farmstay venue and a newly planted vegie patch, Jana says she’s never been happier or more settled.
“A lot of people are chasing a goal they may not really want to achieve purely to overcome something that’s not quite right on the inside, and I definitely had that as a young person.
“There was a whole lot of negative media that I wasn’t quite what everyone wanted – not smart enough, clever enough, fast enough, pretty enough – and it finally dawned on me 10 years ago that I don’t need to be.
“My quirkiness gives me so much power and my passion and fast-speaking slightly ADHD personality is the reason I get everything done. I would say it’s the most settled and happiest I’ve ever been in my life,” she says.
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